1. Field of Invention
The present invention generally relates to network communication systems, and more particularly, to systems and methods for providing differentiated services within a network communication system.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern network communications systems have increasingly employed Internet-based architectures within the network infrastructure. These Internet-based architectures have provided network operators and subscribers significant advantages in terms of connectivity by enabling applications deployed on different physical networks to communicate with one another using a common communications protocol, such as TCP/IP. The recent increase in number and diversity of applications, subscribers and networking environments supported by these architectures, however, has exposed many of the limitations associated with a single, ubiquitous design. Because the Internet was initially intended to provide a free network in which stationary hosts predominately send unicast, reliable, sequenced, non real-time data streams, Internet-based architectures were designed to be robust and minimalistic, with much of the functionality provided by the end hosts. Consequently, the different and potentially incompatible requirements of the increasingly diverse applications, subscribers and networking environments has placed demands on the existing network infrastructure for which the network infrastructure was not originally designed to handle.
These problems have become increasingly apparent as network operators attempt to deploy differentiated services that tailor value-added data processing or performance optimization to particular applications and individual or enterprise subscribers. The problem with deploying these differentiated services within the existing network infrastructure is that the network infrastructure was not designed to support a wide variety application-specific and subscriber-specific services as the corresponding data flows through the network. For example, the routers, gateways and other network nodes typically employed within the network infrastructure generally provide passive routing functionalities. As a result, the existing network infrastructure generally lacks the capability to selectively perform application-specific manipulation of data streams corresponding to different applications and different subscribers.
The deployment of differentiated services within the network infrastructure faces additional challenges in that identifying the data streams on which to perform the differentiated services may involve a significant processing penalty. Some existing approaches attempt to avoid these problems by requiring the client application to send service requests associated with a particular application to a proxy server, which then acts as an agent on behalf of the client application. This approach, however, inhibits wide-scale deployment of differentiated services by requiring the client application to explicitly address service requests to the proxy server. Furthermore, because the proxy server typically uses its own source address and source port when communicating with the intended destination, this approach may cause the service request to fail in the event the intended destination does not recognize the source address and source port associated with the proxy server (which may occur if the intended destination is located behind a firewall). Accordingly, a conventional proxy server approach may be inappropriate to provide differentiated services due to the lack of a transparent end-to-end connection.
Therefore, in light of deficiencies of existing approaches, there is a need for improved systems and methods for providing differentiated services within a network communication system.